


if the world has to end

by WingedFlight



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 09:43:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8008594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedFlight/pseuds/WingedFlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Susan remembers war camps and dreary campaigns, long-toothed sirens and carnivorous ogres, sleeping on the ground and fighting for her life. Somehow, the memories make surviving a plague of the undead just a little bit easier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if the world has to end

**Author's Note:**

  * For [be_themoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/be_themoon/gifts).



This is all it takes: A single wish from the newly deceased to see (for just one moment) a world that is not his own. 

This is how it happens: A confrontation with bullies prolonged unexpectedly, a slipping of the memory, a tug of insatiable desires. 

This is the immediate fall-out: A flurry of policemen investigating the multiple-homicide that took place on school grounds earlier that day. A transference of infectious bodily fluids. An outbreak, rapid and unpredictable and unpreventable. 

(A telegram message sent to multiple recipients: "C FROM N CAUSING OB STOP NOT HIMSELF STOP CANT SEND BACK STOP A VANISHED PLS HELP STOP")

Three days roll past with gathering dread. Then the world ends. 

+

Susan finds her younger brother almost immediately, fighting her way into the university town while most of its inhabitants are already fleeing to the hypothetical safety of the countryside. Edmund is right where he promised: holed up in the tallest building off the main quad, surrounded by raided books on infectious diseases and armed with a decorative sword and his trusted revolver. 

Of Peter, there is no sign. 

They wait for two long anxious days, watching the crowds outside turn from frightened individuals to a single deadly horde. At last, Edmund scribbles a message and leaves it pinned to the wall: MEET US AT LUCY'S

Susan does her best not to think about how long it will take the undead to crawl through their former sanctuary without anyone to fend them off. She remembers the castle of another world, tall and proud and brought low by an attack that occurred only after she and her siblings left it behind. Maybe Edmund thinks the same, for she sees the way he hesitates beside the chessboard still set up in the corner of his dorm room. He pockets the knight and meets her eyes and neither of them say a word.

They leave the building without a backward glance. Edmund takes the lead, sword drawn and ready. Susan has the revolver; she's always been the better shot. 

\+ 

A dream of war camps and battlecries hardly seems to have ended when Susan wakes on the ground beneath threadbare blankets. Her toes are cold. She draws her legs up, reaching a hand to rub at the back of her neck while blearily opening her eyes. 

"About time," grumbles Edmund from the other side of the warehouse closet. He's sitting beside the closed door, back to wall and knees pulled up, a penny dreadful held open in one hand. Beneath the other lies the revolver. 

She rolls her eyes at him because it's easier than talking this soon after waking up. Edmund uses a foot to slide an opened can of beans towards her and she takes it gratefully. It isn't the best breakfast she's ever had but, by heavens above, it isn't the worst either. 

"I've been thinking," says Edmund after she sets the emptied can down. "About the time we left Terebinthia in a hurry."

Her eyebrow arcs up. "The time our ship was under constant attack by the merpeople?"

"Which else?"

"I'm not sure if you've noticed, Ed, but we aren't exactly surrounded by ocean here." 

He sets the paperback down without bothering to mark the page. "No, just a sea of the undead." 

"And therefore, completely different."

"Are you sure?"

She hates when he gives her that look, especially when she's still in the process of untangling Narnian dreams from brutal English reality. 

"You're saying we need a boat." 

He shrugs. "Contained vehicle of some sort, anyway." 

"And a singer." 

"I was thinking we could try with scent, instead."

"It won't work." 

"I beg to differ." 

And what is the point in arguing, when she already knows she'll go along with his plan in the end. They need a way out of this warehouse sooner or later -- and she'd prefer sooner, before the confinement drives her mad. 

So she folds up the blanket, and begins packing up their meager supplies while Edmund outlines his plan. For a moment, it really does remind her of campaign mornings in the other world, and Susan lets the memory sink into her until she can pretend that this is normal and survivable and not the end of the world. 

+

Susan remembers when fighting long-toothed sirens and carnivorous ogres had crossed from horrifying to normal. It is happening again, here and now, as she shoots and slices and stabs her way through this insatiable horde of zombies. The peeling skin and blackening blood doesn't frighten her quite as much as before, though she takes care to cover her own skin in thick gloves and long sleeves and wrapped scarves to avoid contamination. 

Afterwards, on a clear patch of road in the drizzling rain, Susan pulls the scarf away to take a fresh breath of air and ends up screaming instead. It's loud and raw and probably a bad idea but, for one moment, she does not care. 

Edmund waits until she falls silent before reaching to take her hand in a reminder that she isn't alone in this. 

\+ 

They camp in the woods without a fire, resting on frostbitten ground staring up at the dense canopy and listening to each other breathe. 

"Would it have been Caspian?" Susan asks. "How old was he when you visited last?" 

"Three years had passed. It could also have been Coriakin." 

"Or Cornelius, I suppose." She groans. "Why would Eustace bring someone through that was sick?" 

But she knows the answer, thinks of it even as Edmund says, "Modern medicine." 

It still doesn't help to answer what is happening now. Their cousin is clever; he should have realized that such a plague would have no cure in this world. 

\+ 

By the time they reach St. Finbar's Academy for Girls, Lucy has already almost single-handedly converted her school into a fortified sanctuary against the undead. A pair of girls armed with muskets guard the front gate; more are strategically placed along the property's wall. Susan is not all that surprised that Lucy would have somehow managed to get her hands on this many weapons already. 

+

This is how the world ends: a creeping illness that animates corpses with the festering spark of unlife and an insatiable desire for another place. 

This is how the world carries on: a family that reunites, one or two at a time, in the basement of a newly-formed outpost against the plague, armed with weapons and skills and knowledge from their former lives.

+

"If the world has to end," Susan says to Edmund, days earlier in the comfort of his dormitory room, "At least we're not alone." 

+

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate Ending: 
> 
> This is how the plague ends: a confrontation, sudden and unexpected, as Susan comes face to face with the man who started it all. 
> 
> She looks at Caspian, young again despite a full-lived life, with hope and wonder in his eyes despite the darkness around him, eager and hopeful and -- damn it all-- still head-over-heels in puppy love. 
> 
> "For fucks sake, Caspian, leave it alone. I am SO not interested. Go. Home."


End file.
